I don't think Brad Hudson is the scholarly type.
I don't think Brad Hudson is the scholarly type.
Mr Obvious wrote:
MARION JONES, REGINA JACOBS, CJ HUNTER, TIM MONTGOMERY,
JUSTIN GATLIN, FLOYD LANTIS(EVERYBODY WHOEVER RODE IN THE TOUR FOR THAT MATTER),BEN JOHNSON, THE ENTIRE CHINESE AND EAST GERMAN WOMENS TRACK AND FIELD TEAMS, MICHELLE SMITH, BARRY BONDS, MARK MCGUIRE,JOSE CANSECO, ROGER CLEMENS, FLO-JO,THE NFL ETC,ETC,ETC
I'm not sure if you are listing your dumbest or smartest. Regina Jacobs, despite all her character flaws and her fall-back real estate career, did graduate from Stanford. Most of the rest you named I would put among the dumbest.
I'm suprised nobody's yet mentioned OJ Simpson as a dumbest.
virgil carter. degree from byu in statistics and grad work at northwestern with interest in computers. ahead of the wave.
smartest: Paula Radcliffe
dumbest: Matt Yates
As for smartest, I would say Tiger Woods (Stanford), Ronde and Tiki Barber (UVa), David Robinson (Navy), Roger Staubach (Navy), Tom Brady and Peyton Manning both seem fairly intelligent, Ryan Hall, Brian Westbrook (Villanova), Chris Long (UVa senior) and Howie Long (Villanova), Michael Jordan, Matt Leinart (USC), J.J. Reddick (Duke).
dumbest is a little easier... Michael and Marcus Vick (VT), Jamal Lewis, Ray Lewis, T.O., Tony Romo, Roy Williams, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Greg Oden, Shaq (graduated from college, but it took him like 15 yrs), Michael Irvin, Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, Manny Ramirez, John Rocker, Ron Artest, the list goes on.... pretty much never ending in terms of basketball players.....
Barry Bonds is far from dumb
Isn't Gwyn Coogan a math genius?
Kobe Bryant and Lebron James are definitely not dumb. You don't have to go to college to be considered intelligent.
Dexter Manley wrote:
[quote]jsquire wrote:
Truly stupid athletes almost never get good enough to be famous"
I disagree
Manley was uneducated but smart enough to hide his inability to read for quite some time. He certainly wasn't the brightest guy in the NFL but not three-standard-deviations-below-the-mean stupid. Those get by in HS and even sometimes in college but never become pros.
I'd like to add one name to the list: Byron "Whizzer" White. Runner-up for the Heisman, led the NFL in rushing twice, then made it to the Supreme Court.
A sort of "Whizzer" White-light: Alan Page. No laudewith his bachelor's degree from Notre Dame, but he did get a JD from Univ. of Minnesota and eventually became (and remains presently) a State of Minnesota Supreme Court Justice. Very articulate man.
He also thumbed his nose at typical football-coach thinking and trained by distance running, culminating in a 3:22 at Grandma's (sometime in the 1979-82 period) late in his career. This did not sit well with the Vikings' coaches, and he ended up a Chicago Bear for the last couple years of his career.
Imagine an American football defensive lineman today training for a sub-3:30 marathon, given the morphology of lineman and the year-round, specific nature of pro football training.
It's common knowledge that NFL players are the smartest of the major sports athletes in the US. It has the largest percentage of college grads compared to that of any major sport and they have to study and memorize the team playbook and different formations each week which usually is the size of a dictionary. Very seldom does a basketball player stay four years in college and most baseball players get drafted straight out of high school. Most NFL players have at least three years of college under their belt before they are drafted. Boomer Esaison said that learning a new playbook is akin to learning a new language. Tom Brady is so great at his position mostly because he can recognize the schemes that the opposing defense throws at him and can deliver the ball in the open gaps of the defense. It's almost like he knows beforehand what signals the opposing D is going to call. Oh wait...maybe that's a bad example.
In terms of NFL players' intelligence, Michael Lewis had an interesting article on this in the NYTimes magazine a few years back (and it may have been included in his most recent book). The NFL gives all players an intelligence test measured on a 50-point scale along with all the physical exams. If memory serves, only 1 player has ever scored a perfect 50, some punter from Harvard. In general, the players closest to the ball score the highest: center, QB, and nose tackle. (Makes perfect sense that the center has to be smart, since along with the QB he needs to know the playbook best.) Funny that someone mentioned Peyton Manning before, because the article said Eli outscored Peyton by I think 8 or 9 points (on a 50-point scale).
dumbest = runners from the other thread who use a 'piss just'
It's called the Wonderlic. Spelling the name of the test correctly guarantees that you have an IQ of at least 110. Unless you use "The Google" to look it up on "The Internets." That gets you a score of 90. By the way, I had to look it up!
Zeeba Neighba wrote:
A sort of "Whizzer" White-light: Alan Page. No laudewith his bachelor's degree from Notre Dame, but he did get a JD from Univ. of Minnesota and eventually became (and remains presently) a State of Minnesota Supreme Court Justice. Very articulate man.
I have no doubt that Alan Page is an intelligent man, but Supreme Court Justices in Minnesota are elected. I think that his Hall of Fame career with the Vikings may have had a bit to do with that election.
What about Rams quarterback Pat Hayden? Wasn't he a Rhodes Scholar? (I had to look up the spelling of his last name, too.)
I think the German Harald Norpoth was pretty smart, since he never tried to take the lead of a race until the last fifty meters.
And then there's Miruts Yifter, who won the gold medal at the 1980 Olympics in the 5,000 and 10,000 at the age of 41 or 37 (depending on whom you believe). Pacing himself over 10 years of world class running takes some intelligence. On the other hand, he couldn't count laps in a 5,000 against Pre in 1971 or figure out which gate to report to in an Olympic 5,000 semifinal in 1972. But that was early in his career when he was barely 31 (or 27).
Henry Rono is also brilliant for being able to keep himself the focal point of this website.
smartest runner - paul gompers, hbs professor - dude is wicked smart
Living in the Past wrote:
What about Rams quarterback Pat Hayden? Wasn't he a Rhodes Scholar? (I had to look up the spelling of his last name, too.)
I think the German Harald Norpoth was pretty smart, since he never tried to take the lead of a race until the last fifty meters.
And then there's Miruts Yifter, who won the gold medal at the 1980 Olympics in the 5,000 and 10,000 at the age of 41 or 37 (depending on whom you believe). Pacing himself over 10 years of world class running takes some intelligence. On the other hand, he couldn't count laps in a 5,000 against Pre in 1971 or figure out which gate to report to in an Olympic 5,000 semifinal in 1972. But that was early in his career when he was barely 31 (or 27).
Henry Rono is also brilliant for being able to keep himself the focal point of this website.
Here's a website that supposedly has the Wonderlic scores of recent NFL QB's (It's all hearsay because the NFL does not release the scores):
Fitzpatrick from Harvard scored a perfect 50 in 2005. Look at Eli with the #1 score of 2004 with a 39. To put it in perspective Steve Young has a Law degree and scored a 33.
jsquire wrote:
I'd like to add one name to the list: Byron "Whizzer" White. Runner-up for the Heisman, led the NFL in rushing twice, then made it to the Supreme Court.
You missed my earlier posts about him. (And to the person who mentioned Alan Page -- sorry, but he's not in the same league.)
A lot of the posts on this thread are naming good athletes of rather modest academic or professional accomplishment in other areas. I would have thought that there would be a few more outstanding athletes who were also among the best in the world in significant intellectual areas -- Fields Medalists, Nobel Prize winners, members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences or the Harvard Society of Fellows, and so on. (Of course, one can still be very bright without accomplishing much -- the Marilyn vos Savant type.)
just mentioned one - paul gompers, harvard business school professori think he ran 2:11 or 2:12 for marathonvery well published in the best econ/finance journalsvery respected in the field
Avocados Number wrote:
jsquire wrote:I'd like to add one name to the list: Byron "Whizzer" White. Runner-up for the Heisman, led the NFL in rushing twice, then made it to the Supreme Court.
You missed my earlier posts about him. (And to the person who mentioned Alan Page -- sorry, but he's not in the same league.)
A lot of the posts on this thread are naming good athletes of rather modest academic or professional accomplishment in other areas. I would have thought that there would be a few more outstanding athletes who were also among the best in the world in significant intellectual areas -- Fields Medalists, Nobel Prize winners, members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences or the Harvard Society of Fellows, and so on. (Of course, one can still be very bright without accomplishing much -- the Marilyn vos Savant type.)
I believe that Dexter Manley, former Wahington Redskin, was technically illiterate despite graduating from both high school and college.